the faint aroma of cafe con leche drifts through the air.

a bon iver playlist lulls my heart into the contented state of pure bliss (chocolate) (tbh it was something of a religious experience for me when holocene started playing).

untidy bookshelves of every kind of literature border the back walls.

antique lamps, clocks, tables, and mismatched furniture put even the classiest hobby lobby catalogs to shame (this is like. the true OG of vintage.)

it’s so pacific northwest feel that i feel chiller than ice-t with my flannel and my (probably-as-old-as-ice-t) 80’s jansport backpack. literally. put a pizza bagel in my hand and i’m drowning in a pool of tears (of happiness).

one of the first days in granada, my host madre showed my roommate and i this cute little cafe only a block or two from the casa. they call it: la qarmita. it’s basically the disneyland of all cafe’s and a very direct route to my heart. i haven’t had a chance/the time/i also totally forgot how to get here and saint sara had to walk me there (basically like a mom leading a toddler by the hand for her first steps) (also i might have definitely taken photos of where it was and the nearby streets so i could find it again).

we spent the afternoon and into the evening with intent to hacer some tarea (homework is a necessity sometimes, i guess). but the day easily led to no tarea, but rather travel ideas for long weekends and the opportunities for adventure and exploration (me: so for spring break. is every country in europe too ambitious or nah?).

but i spent a lot of the day preoccupied with an internalized monologue. my thought process ranged from coldplay’s speed of sound to trey songz’s moving slow motion. similar to a netflix queue, it was a random mix of everything. but sometimes a weird little spanish café full of hipsters that look like they came straight out of portlandia with bon iver in the background wooing your soul is all you need on a sunday afternoon.

we’re always searching for so much more to see, that it’s really simple to forget all the things we’ve already seen. but it’s easy to confuse remembrance with nostalgia. and at the same time to confuse opportunity with escape.

“she was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. they would look on and on after every one else’s eyes in the world would have stopped looking. she looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.”